Popeye the Sailor
Popeye the Sailor began as a cartoon character in Thimble Theatre, a King Features Syndicate Daily strip, in 1929. He was enormously popular prior to and during World War II, and throughout the 1950s and 60s. Popeye has appeared in all sorts of merchandising, video games, comic books, cartoons, films, advertising, and his name is indelibly linked with that of Olive Oyl. The character was created by Elzie Crisler Segar, and was based – as were all of the regular characters in the strip – on a real person.
Segar was from Chester, Illinois and he based Popeye on a local man he remembered from his youth there. The man’s name was Frank Fiegel, known locally as Rocky. As a boy Rocky developed a reputation for toughness. He lived with his mother and was known to never back down from a fight, once taking on five local boys at once, beating three of them and chasing off the other two.
According to local lore, Rocky later worked at a saloon owned by a man named George Gozney. Following his shift and one or two glasses of beer, Rocky would sleep outside in a chair, soaking up the sunshine with his pipe in his mouth. This made him a tempting target for local children passing by, who would wait until they were close before screaming loudly, startling the dozing man, who would leap to his feet, somewhat befuddled, before returning to his chair, muttering to himself.
Whether Rocky possessed the voluminous forearms of his later alter ego is unknown, but given the descriptions of his toughness and willingness to accept combat at all times it is likely he did. There is little to link Rocky with spinach either, but spinach didn’t really have much of a presence with Popeye until he began to appear in animated cartoons.
Rocky Fiegler apparently spent his whole life in Chester, and his corn cob pipe and frequent demonstrations of his physical strength were built into the character created by Segar. Fiegler died in 1947 at the age of 79. His gravestone contains an image of the original Popeye, said by many to have strongly resembled him.